


It Gets Better

by itsaquinnquinnsituation



Series: X Years Later [8]
Category: Newcastle (2008)
Genre: Canon Gay Character, Canon Gay Relationship, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-10
Updated: 2014-11-10
Packaged: 2018-02-24 19:58:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2594540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itsaquinnquinnsituation/pseuds/itsaquinnquinnsituation
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Approximately eight years later.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It Gets Better

**Author's Note:**

> None of the characters or the plot of the original movie belong to me. I am not making money off my work, which is written for entertainment purposes only.
> 
> This is my universe and exactly how I see it. Writing should be enjoyed, not judged.
> 
> This is very much a background essay bit - I decided to take time and write out a bit of what I see outside the immediate reality of the characters. If it somewhat diverges from the movie canon - I am sorry. The characters have a life of their own in my mind's eye.
> 
> Special thank you to people who leave me nice comments and give me kudos - it always inspires me to write more! I appreciate all your support!
> 
> I highly recommend everyone to watch this movie.

 

The ticking sound of his watch, obnoxiously loud in what is otherwise almost deafening silence of his small apartment, finally becomes too much, and he gets up, eyeing the place in a momentary confusion, then saunters aimlessly to the living room window and pulls back the curtain. Early morning hours of a chilly April night do not welcome him with open arms, but instead, present him with a calm dark landscape. Living in a city, albeit close to the ocean, does not allow for seeing any celestial bodies in the sky – save for the moon – that is, he really has to drive out there to the wilderness to admire the tremendous space of the universe, which he enjoys doing very much, though he does not have too many opportunities to experience it as often as he would like – that’s why he would agree that watching yellow street lights out of his living room window would have to be the next best thing… well, for now. 

He sighs. 

He feels sufficiently alert and his headache has passed, yet he feels unexplained anxiety and unease. He’s felt it before, too, and he’s begun to wonder if this incessant stress at work had permanently damaged his psyche to the point that he would not be able to enjoy a small vacation even if he tried – that the necessity to stay busy and make the most of his time had been so deeply etched into his character that there was no mental remoulding that could ever be done. And even now, in the wee hours of the beginning of a long weekend – in the dimly lit living room of his apartment - his own place, his home and his fortress – he feels as strung out and on the edge as ever. 

They say, it gets better.

 

 

They used to say that to him when he was a youngster too – well, not really they – saying “they” would imply that there were several people who would have cared to talk to him – much more encourage him – what, at that time, simply wasn’t the case. He was an odd kid, there was no denying that – his health problems meant he stayed home a lot – alone – whilst his twin brother was playing on the streets with his friends – and he’d learnt to deal with it as well as he could. He was going through library books – we’re talking serious grown-up kinds of stuff – the way his peers were devouring comics – and he could hold a serious, intelligent conversation well before he was fourteen – well, if someone cared to look past his awkward stuttering and painful shyness – but the lack of peer interaction had made him unmistakably socially inept. He lived in his own fantasy world, where his imagination had a free reign, and he did not have to butt heads with other people.

 It may have been fine, really, and he may have grown into some kind of quiet computer nerd, were it not for his twin brother. By the time they were in their teens, Jesse started hating even sharing a last name with him. He was ashamed of him – and everything Fergus did, made it worse. It was not bad enough that Fergus was too weak for most sports – no, he also had to be gay and harbor a passion for darkness. Anything and everything that could be so ill-fitting for a brother of an up-and-coming surf star – Fergus was all that – well, in Jesse’s mind.

Victor was another thing. Fergus never exhibited enough of an opposition to him for Victor to take any notice. Jesse did – so Victor directed most of his animosity towards the older twin - Fergus was more of an mild annoyance. And at times Fergus could swear that he saw something close to pity in his older half-brother’s eyes. But just momentarily – then it was gone. And of course, Victor would not stoop so low to voice it. 

With his parents emotionally out of the picture, with a chaotic, undisciplined and uncontrolled crowd of barely post-pubescent teenagers at school, there were few places Fergus could let his emotions safely out to play. He kept a diary – that was a given - he was nice to neighbours – even a basic “hello, how are you?” was sometimes enough to put a smile on his face – days when encounters like this were the only ones to make him smile and… well, there was music of course – there were songs he could write, there was his fantasy world, video games, movies, and yet…

There were days he felt so lonely, it was unbearable. His fragile, damaged soul had walled itself off from the rest of the world so entirely, that dismantling all the defences was an almost impossible task. Sometimes it hurt more to be shunned than to be bullied. The looks that other kids – normal, garden-variety Australian kids – gave him, made him feel weird and out-of-place. 

He contemplated suicide, of course – well, that was *almost* a given for kids like himself, the dark, “emo” kids, kids that made a big deal out of depression. He felt somewhat validated by identifying with the type – it made him feel slightly more normal, but not normal enough to find any enjoyment in life. At times he thought that he was consciously seeking out depression – that it had become such a usual way of life that embracing anything else would have been like a primary school drama play – fake, awkward and utterly embarrassing. 

And then there was that whole business with cutting. He didn’t even think of it, till he read about it somewhere on the internet forum – he tried it then once – didn’t work – or he thought it didn’t work because he didn’t feel any better – or worse - and when he tried to do it again – with a bit more resolve this time around – he got caught by Jesse and the look his brother gave him upon seeing him like that – well, that stemmed the idea before it could have turned into something much uglier – and damn, Fergus was thankful for that – because quietly hating himself was far better than being branded a nutcase. 

 

So those were the issues back then. Back when Victor’s grandfather would tell him that it got better with time. Fergus liked him – he was a well-known town drunk, a jolly old guy with a penchant for drawn-out heartfelt talks – when his mind was not too clouded by liquor. He liked Fergus – harboured no hard feelings against his mother – and even considered him family. He would look at him, pursing his lips under bushy white mustache and say it in a low raspy voice: “Oh that’s alright, kid, it gets better. It will get better with time, you just wait.”

Course, at the time it didn’t seem so. Now, Fergus could look back at his sixteen-year-old self and want to slap that boy across the face – because for God’s sake, what did it matter? What did it matter what those other kids thought? Just the fact that his interests and ideas were so alien to them should have alerted him early on, that he was not an ordinary person, that he was something more, that he really *was* something else…

But at the time… at the time, it didn’t seem like that at all. Days turned into weeks, into months, and things were not getting better. And then Victor’s grandfather died – was found in a ditch curled up like a dog – and by God, that hurt so much that Fergus felt he could also just close his eyes and never wake up – the face of the old man telling him it gets better seeming phony and mocking, and now, with one less person talk to, Fergus would come up to the window in his room and whisper to God, or to the moon, or to the street lights, which were hiding the stars, he’d whisper bitterly, he’d beg them desperately, he’d beseech them with fervor, to tell him why the world was so unfair. 

But a small glimmer of hope remained, that if the old drunk had such faith in those words to take them with him to his grave, there must have been some truth in them.

And then came Andy. 

The whole thing just sneaked up on Fergus, real slow and tentative at first, and then floored him and sucked him in like a whirlwind. Oh, it was nothing smooth – not for someone like Fergus – but not even his worries that he could be someone’s charity case - could help him disentangle himself from the web that this garden-variety jock had carelessly and perhaps, unknowingly, trapped him in. And who knows what it was at first – Andy would never admit it – and let him – Fergus would not care to pry, but one thing both were certain of: at some point it was too late – at some point it was too much – far too much to even step back and examine it – both were in over their heads, and for better or worse, there was just no other choice but to hold on with both hands and steer the boat – they were far too offshore to jump out.

That was not all, however. 

It sure as hell helped having somebody like Andy watching his back – sometimes literally – making sure that he didn’t fall, but even Andy was in no position to fight with his demons – though the layout of his steadfast support was a much safer ground for Fergus to finally find his voice. And Andy aided with that as well, actually, – Fergus distinctly remembered – one day when they were still in their half-friendship half-god-knows-what stage, sitting on the bed in Andy’s bedroom, when Andy asked him: “Well, what does it matter what the rest of the world thinks?” Fergus lowered his eyes: “I don’t know” - then lifted them up again to search Andy’s with hesitation, - “Well, I would care… like… like what… like what you’d think…” And Andy shrugged – that very special kind of shrug – the kind that Fergus saw him give his mother countless times – when she asked him if he’d mind to pick up some milk from the grocery store or something – a shrug that in Andy’s language meant only one thing – “Well, isn’t it obvious?”

Isn’t it obvious? 

His nineteen-year old self in college would - just a short time later - agree. 

 

 

Well, that was then. 

Fergus chuckles to himself. The truth is – there is no truth. And Victor’s grandfather was also no prophet. Nothing is certain in life. Nobody is guaranteed to meet somebody like Andy. Nobody is guaranteed to go from an ugly duckling to swan – but the very least one can do – the very least one owes to himself – is to hope. To never – ever – give up that hope, even when things get hard. Because just as life sets out traps, it can also shower with goodness. 

He takes a deep breath and smiles to himself, before finally closing the curtain and making his way back into the bedroom. He doesn’t turn on the light as the awakening sun is attempting to prod at him with its curious rays, and he sits on the bed in their tentative glow. 

But he barely has a moment to appreciate the peaceful view. 

“Whahmpf?” – Andy rolls over almost instantaneously and reaches blindly at him with his hand, which Fergus catches in both of his own and strokes. Andy whimpers a little more, covering his eyes with his other arm, before bringing it down and blinking hastily at Fergus: - “Is it time to get up?”

“We gotta go in about forty-five” – Fergus nods at him gently, failing to hold in a smile at his messy hair and innocent sleepy eyes. Andy smiles too and squeezes his hand, - “Sorry if I woke you up just now, I didn’t mean to, you can sleep a little more…”

“No, no, it’s okay” – Andy interrupts him immediately and squeezes his hand once again with a tired sigh, - “I don’t like to rush anyway… you’re already dressed?”

“Couldn’t sleep” – Fergus explains, watching him prop himself up on the pillow, - “I might have just as well not gone to sleep at all… sorry if I disturbed you with all the twisting and turning…”

Andy does his famous shrug and he’s awake enough for that gentle, enthralled little gleam, to start glowing in his blue-grey eyes. He’s slightly pale and obviously tired, but his joy at being with Fergus just shines right through him – it’s truly amazing. 

“But if it helps - I already loaded the suitcases into the car and packed up some breakfast food too. The coffee is brewed – we can have it now, or I can… pour it into a thermos… so…” – His eyes connect with Andy’s and he slowly loses track of his thought, - “So… you can… take your time getting ready…”

Andy smiles his unashamed, carefree smile, that is about a million times brighter than the sun rays now intruding into their bedroom, disentangles one of his hands out of Fergus’, and instead, reaches it around his neck, beckoning him closer:

“What did I ever do to deserve someone like you making me breakfast?”

“Oh - not just that” – Fergus lets himself be pulled in, jokingly raising his index finger, - “Marrying you too – in just a few months.”

“Oh, that’s right” – Andy agrees in a whisper, tilting his head and closing his eyes, - “This just gets better and better…”


End file.
